Did the welfare state polarize American politics among racial lines and secure numerous votes for the Democratic Party?
First define welfare. Is Medicare welfare? Is SS welfare? Food stamps?
Next, prove that welfare recipients are more likely to vote Democrat. There’s a whole lot of poor white “trailer trash” types that lean pretty hard on public assistance programs, but don’t vote Democrat.
Food stamps, since neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to change much with Medicare or SS.
How many?
None. The “welfare state” is necessary unless you want political instability, mass starvation, food riots and all the rest. The Republicans want it gone because they either don’t care about the consequences or are actively looking forward to them. The Republicans are full of the sort of people who’d love to solve the problem of hunger among the poor by mass murdering them. Just wait for the food riots to start, then open up with the machine guns.
I’m going to have to go with “Define Welfare first” for $500, Alex.
Do voters make those connections? Social security and medicare are two of the biggest democrat created welfare programs we have, and people on them tend to lean republican.
If by ‘welfare’ you mean programs that benefit single mothers and blacks, those groups tend to vote democratic anyway. Blacks are democrat about 9-1, and single mothers are about 3-1 democrat.
What about private charity and volunteerism?
They aren’t Democrat because of welfare?
Actually, I’m pretty sure most poor white “trailer trash” types either don’t vote(most) or vote democratic.
Lower-middle class or working-class whites, well that’s a different story.
There’s a tendency amongst a lot of people too have these stereotypes about poor people stupidly voting against their own interests, but most still vote democratic.
It’s the middle class and the upper class republicans do better amongst.
True, but older people have more wealth than other generations and also tend to be more socially conservative.
To the exact same extent as the minimum wage, defense spending, drunk driving laws, tax raises, the NSA, tax cuts, abortion, “common sense regulations”, free speech, every war we ever fought, prayer in school, gerrymandering, No Child Left Behind, the free market, gun control, and … every other piece of legislation that was ever voted on, or talked about being voted on, by elected politicians.
Welcome to politics.
It’s always about doling out goodies from the trough. Neither party has cornered the market. Society is about pooling resources.
In the US over the last 30 years, the pooling has tended to be almost entirely at the deep end.
Not really-blacks became solidly Democratic due to LBJ’s push on civil rights.
As Qin Shi Huangdi said, black people overwhelmingly support the Democrats because of LBJ and Civil Rights, though it’s also because of the Republicans’ use of the Southern Strategy in the decades following Civil Rights. The Republicans made a conscious and admitted effort to try and appeal to some formerly Democratic voters- aggrieved southern racist white people that were upset about the Civil Rights movement (from the 60s on this was a significant, though slowly decreasing, demographic).
They are not remotely capable of doing the job, as demonstrated by history. And have a strong tendency to be anything but “charitable”; instead, they tend to be predatory.
In the UK, those people on welfare, or employed by the government, tend to vote Labour, as they perceive that the left is more likely to improve their benefits and wages than the Conservative right.
This is a sweeping generalisation as many Local Government employees such as teachers vote for the centre Liberal party, and many blue collar workers have extreme right wing views about immigration etc, but still vote Labour.
The perception (if not the reality) is that the Labour party is more friendly to the lower paid (or people who think they are), Liberals are green and environment oriented, and Conservatives are in the thrall of big business.
Had private charity and volunteerism been sufficient, it would never have been necessary to create welfare programs to begin with.
Red states take more government money than blue states.
Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alabama, and Kentucky are all in the top ten states that take more from the federal government than they contribute. All of these states are ‘red states’. All of these states spend a good portion of that money on ‘anti-poverty’ programs.
ISTM that the ‘welfare state’ benefits Republicans.
I wonder to what extent the corporate welfare state is promulgated by self-interested politicians of all stripes in exchange for votes, campaign contributions, bribes, their own stock portfolios and future preferments?
Even the extreme right-wing CATO Institute puts this at $100 billion per annum excluding tax loopholes and trade barriers.
Other analyses have different figures:
Since then we’ve had the huge banking payouts. So - apart from crude class warfare politicking why are people sweating the small stuff?
I’d say that crude class warfare politicking is a pretty darn good reason 